


I'm not calling you a ghost (stop haunting me)

by Skye_Writer



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:11:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skye_Writer/pseuds/Skye_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara Oswald liked the Doctor.  She liked that he was intelligent without being condescending.  She liked his fundamental kindness to the people who needed it most.</p>
<p>All Clara didn’t like was the way he looked at her sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm not calling you a ghost (stop haunting me)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a scene I want desperately to happen in some form or another before this series is up. Mostly written between the airings of "Cold War" and "Hide." I'm well aware this will probably be moot by the time we reach the finale.

Clara Oswald liked the Doctor. She liked that he was intelligent without being condescending. She liked his fundamental kindness to the people who needed it most. She loved that she could travel with him to the most amazing places in the universe (the _actual universe_ ) and be back home in time to help Angie make supper and Artie with his homework.

All Clara didn’t like was the way he looked at her sometimes.

It didn’t happen all the time, but it still happened often enough that she’d started to notice. They’d be in the TARDIS, off to some far-flung and alien destination, chatting about whatever, and she would say something perfectly ordinary. And she’d catch that _look_ stealing across the Doctor’s face. It would only last for a moment, but she’d see it—his ready smile faded, his considerable brow furrowed, and his eyes bored into her like she was a rock. And in that same moment, Clara would feel like she’d done something wrong.

And then the Doctor would smile and carry on like nothing had happened, and Clara would feel weird and off-balance for a few minutes.

“No one else,” he’d said to her after Akhaten, but she wasn’t sure how much he’d meant it even now. It was just… the way he looked at her. And watched her, she’d caught him at that a couple of times as well. Like he was studying her, or remembering whoever it was that had died. She wondered if he ever really saw her for _her_ , or if he was just seeing someone else instead.

She was used to that, actually. After Mum had died, everyone had looked at her like that, and told Clara to her face how much she reminded them of Ellie. Her father couldn’t help the looking, but at least from him she understood it. From everyone else—neighbours, family friends, Mum’s old coworkers—it was maddening. Two and a half months after the funeral, Clara had chopped half her hair off and dyed it black with angry red highlights, just so friends she ran into in the market would stop telling her how much she looked like her mum. (Though in hindsight, she’d sort of ruined her intentions by spending the rest of that summer wearing her mum’s old acid-washed jean jacket. Everyone had their lapses at sixteen, she supposed.)

So she understood, in a resigned way, but coming from the Doctor it just seemed strange. Sometimes she got the impression that he wasn’t just remembering—and yet other times she was certain that he _was_ , and she didn’t know what to make of it.

*** *** ***

Sometimes, when she was lying in her bed back at home, Clara tried to imagine what _she_ was like. The dead girl. Mostly she tried to figure out why she reminded the Doctor of someone at all. She supposed there might be physical similarities, but that wasn’t what he was reacting to, was it? It was the things she said and did, or didn’t say and do. So what then? Was the dead girl just a list of positives and negatives, then? A bunch of traits Clara couldn’t decide between?

Usually when her thinking reached this point, Clara rolled over and shook her head. There wasn’t any point in worrying about it. Strange looks or no, the Doctor had said that it was her he was taking along, not a ghost of someone else. And he’d never mentioned the dead girl but the once.

So what was she so worried about?

*** *** ***

Clara finally asked him.

“Do I look like her?”

The Doctor poked his head around the console. “Sorry, what?”

Clara could only hold his gaze for a moment. She folded her arms and looked down. “The friend of yours, the one who died. Do I look like her?”

And then she had to look up again, because she had to see his reaction.

He was staring at her, opening and closing his mouth in a struggle for words. Eventually he winced and settled on “sort of.”

“Okay.” Clara bit the inside of her lip, thinking. “How sort of?”

“Clara, do we really have to—“

“Yes!” she snapped. “Half the things I say, you give me this look like you’re not seeing me at all, and I keep wondering if you’re just remembering her instead!”

“It’s not like that,” he said, a desperate edge entering his voice.

“Then what’s it like?” she asked. “Why bring me along if I’m just filling in for someone else?”

“You’re not,” the Doctor said quietly, his expression suddenly inscrutable. “Believe me, Clara, you’re not.”

She almost wanted to believe him, she really did, but there was so much else she didn’t understand, and she wasn’t sure she would have a chance to ask about it after this. “Why do you keep looking at me like that, then?” she asked. “Why—why were you there when we buried Mum? What were you making sure of?”

The Doctor didn’t say anything. He sighed and fiddled with something on the console before stepping around it to stand properly in front of her. He folded his arms and looked down a moment before meeting her eyes. “I don’t know.”

Clara blinked. “You don’t know,” she said flatly. “But…” She blinked again, trying to figure out what to say next, before he got any bright ideas and changed the subject. “Why go back at all, then? If you didn’t know? You could’ve just—just left well enough alone, you didn’t have to—“

“I did.”

_“Why?!”_

The question came out as a shout, echoing off the walls of the console room. The TARDIS made a low noise of discontent, and the Doctor was staring at Clara in surprise. Clara felt suddenly quite small. She swallowed and sort of shrugged, as if it might make her question go away.

“It’s just…” She shrugged again. “I’ve just been thinking. And it’s been bothering me.”

“What’s been bothering you?” the Doctor asked, his voice quiet and polite, as though Clara had not just shouted at him loud enough to upset his time machine.

“You knew my name.” She laced her fingers together, wringing her knuckles nervously, staring at the Doctor without really looking at him. She’d thought about that day he’d turned up on the doorstep too many times now, it felt like, but she couldn’t help to return to it. “You knew my name,” she said again, “and you asked—you asked if I remembered you.” She refocused her gaze on the Doctor. “Why?”

“Well, you had just phoned me,” the Doctor replied, a ghost of a smile lingering at the corners of his mouth.

“I didn’t give you my name,” she said.

“I traced the call back.”

“Yeah, I figured that’s how you got there so fast, but…” She took a deep breath and let it out. “That’s not my house. It’s George’s house, my name’s not anywhere on it, I just live there. So how did you know my name?”

“Clara—“

“How did you know?” she asked again, her voice rising a little. “What aren’t you telling me, Doctor?”

The Doctor held her gaze for a few moments, then sighed and bowed his head. “It’s a long story.”

Clara scoffed. “We’re in a time machine.”

He looked up, a wry smile on his face. “We are.” He straightened up and grabbed one of the scanner screens, wheeling it around the console until it was flush with the one already facing Clara. “It’s still a long story, and I don’t know how it ends, so you’ll have to forgive me for the gaps.”

“All right,” Clara said, folding her arms again and stepping forward to look at the screens as the Doctor typed away on the console. Her heart was pounding and her stomach felt a little fluttery, but she couldn’t figure out why. She was getting answers, wasn’t she? She hadn’t actually expected him to tell her the truth when she asked that first question, but now—

The console beeped a couple of times, and two images appeared on each screen, showing two very different women, one in a uniform that looked straight out of a sci-fi movie, the other in a fine Victorian dress. They had one thing in common, though.

They both looked exactly like her.

“Is this a joke?” she breathed. She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. Her heart was being so hard and so fast she could feel it in her head, and she was pretty certain she would have fainted if the Doctor hadn’t grabbed her arm and steadied her.

“It’s not a joke,” he said. “I promise. Are you all right?”

“Sure, fine,” Clara said, swallowing hard and hugging herself tightly. “How is this—how—“

“I knew your name because I’d met you before,” the Doctor said. “Twice, actually. And, I don’t know why, Clara, but… you died both times.”

Clara screwed her eyes shut, trying to banish the images from her mind, but they floated to the front of her thoughts, eerie and unsettling. She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes again and focused on the Doctor instead of the screens.

“Okay,” she said. “You’d better explain.”


End file.
